 Avatar, Way of the Waters seems to be doing well at the box office. It's good for James Cameron. It's good for Disney. Well done. You know what's not doing well? Babylon. To say the movie is bombing would be an understatement. Let's quickly talk about it and break down why we think this is. Writer, director Damien Chazelle has done it again. He's made a movie do really badly at the box office and this is one of the greatest director slash writers working in the industry today. I think his last movie did pretty badly too, which was First Man, a beautiful, powerful film that I did see in theaters day one and absolutely loved it. The film before that, La La Land. Congratulations Damien. You got me to like a musical. I love a musical. A wonderful film with great performances. Before that, I'm just a little movie called Whiplash, which won several awards, much like La La Land, and it's critically acclaimed across the board. This guy has a stellar track record, much like James Cameron. Unlike James Cameron, he doesn't have that box office gold. His movies are more isolated. They're more abstract. They're not general public certified hits. These are movies that film students love and your grandma ignores at all costs. So when Babylon hit theaters only a few days ago and opened to incredibly underwhelming numbers, pulling in only about 5 million as of today worldwide, that's often $80 million budget. I wasn't surprised. In fact, I said to multiple people, this movie's going to tank and tank it has. And it's really sad, but also really expected. Now, keep in mind, $80 million is just the cost of the production and paying the actors and whatnot. That doesn't include marketing, which they say often balloons to like half the cost of the movie itself, sometimes even more. So the film costs around $120 million in all reality, possibly even higher than that. Five million's not going to make up the difference. And by the time this thing gets out of theaters, it'll be lucky if it even scrapes by 10 to 15. It seems almost unheard of that a film starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie would do so poorly, but let's remember just a few months ago Amsterdam came out and did even worse. With Christian Bale and again Margot Robbie and a handful of other big name celebrities, I didn't see either of them in theaters. And it's for basically one reason. Well, I guess two. In the case of Amsterdam, it just looked really bad. In the case of Babylon, I saw zero trailers on it, no marketing at all, and a three hour runtime. Three hours! This is from a director I love. His previous films have all hit me on an emotional, raw level. And I had no interest in going to see this because of that three hour runtime, which I've been bitching up a storm about for years now. Why do these movies think they need to be so long? Now people will say some of the greatest movies of all time are Three Hours or Longer, Lord of the Rings, for instance. Yeah, it's my favorite trilogy. It's based off of some incredibly deep books with complex characters, intriguing worlds that they live in that are larger than life. It earns its runtime. A movie like Babylon that's based on old timey Hollywood? No! What? No! In the case of Avatar and Avatar 2, those movies are set in different planets. They are huge blockbuster movies, yet there's so little depth to them, pun intended because of the water, that they should have been shorter. This story doesn't justify the long ass narrative. Now the runtime steered me away for sure. I don't think that's the big factor for a lot of moviegoers. I think it's more or less the fact that the marketing was complete shit for this thing. It came out against a massive blockbuster film put out by James Cameron, who never misses when it comes to the box office, Disney, who typically puts a lot of money into marketing. In this case, it was no different. And people are going to less and less basic films at the theaters. It's all about the blockbuster or word of mouth. And if you have no one going to the film, there's not much mouth. There's not much word, is there? It's really weird. I saw a bunch of articles and tweets blaming Margot Robbie or saying she's not it. She's not bringing in the views. When did we turn on her? Why are people suddenly like anti-Margot Robbie? She's a national treasure. Also, I'm pretty sure Brad Pitt is like the top build on this thing, or at least equal build. And I heard nothing about him being the problem. Because neither of them are the problem. They're very lovable, likable people. As far as actors go. No, if we look back at the big winners, it's all tentpole, massive movies. Top Gun 2 Maverick, an established character, an established franchise based on nostalgia and the love of blockbuster Tom Cruise films. Avatar 2, a movie 12 to 13 years in the making that people have been very eager to get out and see. Especially in the foreign markets where that is the bread and butter for Avatar. You got No Way Home, a massive tentpole Spider-Man MCU film. These are all huge, big budget movies. And movies that are doing great on the small scale are like Terrifier 2. Terrifier 2, for instance, made a ton of money because it costs like $50 to make and all the actors were paid via target gift cards. I'm joking, but honestly the films were made very cheap. And word of mouth took those things to the next level. Babylon is just in a bad state all around. It came out in an awful time. It cost too much money for the type of movie it is. And it was very exclusive to a small faction of people. And I'm part of that, and I still didn't see it. I am a little bummed that movies like Babylon aren't doing well, but also at the same time, this has to be some sort of a warning, right? Like, scale back on your films a bit. Don't make them three hours long. Don't blow out the budget when it doesn't need to be. And you know, really figure out your audience in the best time to release your film. I gave you my opinions, they're honest. As always, please think about subscribing to the channel if you haven't as I post tons of rants and movie reviews each and every week. I'd love to have you stick around and let me know in the comments what you think happened here. Why is this a trainwreck? Why did it bomb? Am I spot on? Or is there something else I'm not thinking about? Would love to hear from you. Please like the video if you had a good time, share it around on your socials or with your friends via word of mouth. I'd appreciate it, and hopefully, I see you soon. And seriously, if you haven't seen this director's other works, highly recommend all of them. Whiplash, La La Land, First Man, all fantastic, all different, all great. All the time. And while you're doing that, maybe think about joining me on Patreon at Patreon.com slash Adam Does Movies or become a YouTube join member right here via that join button. I had to overpronounce my T's because I got that Minnesota D in me. I just, that sounded sexual, got that Minnesota D in me. Anyway, yeah, support the channel, I'd appreciate it, thanks.